I'M BACK!

Hello..... hellooooo.... hellooooooooo……can anybody hear me? Is anyone still out there? I know I disappeared for two almost three years but hey, I'm back. I went to live in California for a while but now I'm back at BYU trying to finish what I started 5 long years ago, with a couple of added items to the itinerary making a grand total of a major in Clinical Lab Science, Spanish Translation, and (can I get a drum roll please) a minor in History, just for fun. I figure I’ve been at BYU for a long time; I might as well have something to show for it.

Being back in school is brutal. My first semester back was harder than my freshman year. Though my study habits have improved drastically since freshman year, all of my friends have graduated and moved away, graduated and married, or out on missions of their own. So I was left to fend for myself again and make new friends; luckily I brought some friends back with me that I met in California. They are great :D

Well, it has been quite an adventure trying to reintegrate myself into “society.” As a missionary you are isolated from “the world” (and I literally mean the world: music, movies, anything that you used to spend time on is out, family and friends except through letters and two phone calls home a year) so that you can truly focus on the work. It was a challenge at first but it has been the greatest thing in the world. When you remove every label that you use to identify yourself (i.e. punk rock, rap, fubu, volcome, Wicked, Napoleon Dynamite, etc.) you are left with who you really are, or that is where the task of finding who you really are begins, and you can determine what you want to become. It’s almost like a new beginning. So this is the new and improved version of me if there is still anyone out there along for the ride.

"TADA!"

Finally finals... again

I never feel like posting until I read all of your blogs. That or I am just avoiding studding for finals. I feel like I was sleeping from mid February through the beginning of April and just now I’ve woken up and I have a lot to do. Yeah so BYU is in the middle of finals, which means that I am swamped with work. I have been working full shifts during reading days at the bookstore and then I am too tired to study at night, which is not good. So now I start with my finals so I'll only work half days maybe I can study now. I have to take two spanish lit tests tomorrow, polisci tuesday, and english wednesday and I'll be done. I pack on thursday and fly home friday. Well that's the plan anyway.

I get to go home and work all summer and then in October I start a whole new chapter in my life. It will be the hardest, scariest thing (other then marriage) that I will ever do in my life but like marriage it will change my life for all time and all eternity. I am both scared and excited to fulfill this mission but I know that I need to do this. In the conference this April Elder Richard G. Scott echoed what I had said to myself a couple of months ago. I will never regret going but I will always regret not having gone, so I am going.

So Many Choices

Ok well I guess I don’t have that many choices but I have some choices to make. I hate deciding. I can never make up my mind. Anyways, with a year and a half left of school and an internship, I thought about doing other things before finishing school. There are just so many choices to make. This morning I had the hardest time deciding whether I should shower first and then make breakfast or eat breakfast first and then shower. I seriously tossed and turned in bed for an hour thinking that over and over. I guess I was not really thinking about it for a whole hour because my mind kept wandering into other choices I have to make. I ended up making breakfast first because by the time I decided to shower I heard my roommate walk into the bathroom.

It’s not just the choices; it’s all the planning that has to be done for whatever you chose to do. I don’t want to make a decision based on which will be easier just because I am too lazy or too scared to actually get out of my comfort zone and go for the other choices. Right now the easiest choice is to stay here and just go on with school as planned and do nothing. I know that some of you are puzzled by my whole not leaving my comfort zone because I actually left home at 18 to live hundreds of miles away form home with complete strangers for a couple of years. Some would say that that is definitely leaving your comfort zone. But that was the next logical step. After high school you go to college. I just had to choose one college and they made the decision easy because they chose me. I just had to figure out how to make it work. Now I have the opportunity to do something more, something else. It’s harder to make a choice when all possibilities are good. If I stay it’s good, and if I go it’s good too. I don’t know if one will be better then the other until I actually go, or not go. To go or not to go, that is the question.

Nice weather over

So today was so windy... and I kept running into people that I wanted to talk to but since it was cold and windy we could not talk much. We are supposed to get another winter storm; so much for the nice 45 degree weather. We are supposed to get a couple of inches of snow. I dont mind, it means I can wear my sweaters longer.

This is the first week in a while that I dont have a test or a paper due (well I do have a two page summary on an interview I have to give but that does not count; I dont see that as a huge assignment) so I feel pretty good. We have eight weeks of school left (according to my roommate you counted and reminds me every week). I have to enjoy the time I have left.

Saturday!!!!!!

Each week seems to go by faster and faster; it’s already Saturday! This morning I woke up at about 7 or 8 and found the roof tops covered in snow. We got a couple of inches while we were sleeping. But now the sun is out and it’s hot. We've reached a high of 45 degrees F. I never thought 45 degrees would be hot.

Well, the semester is half way over. That means I'll be home in two months, yay! Classes are lame. I only have class three days a week and it feels weird, oh well, I wont get that pleasure again.

Lately I've been lost in a sea of choices. This is not good for someone who is so indecisive. Oh well, time will tell.

Congratulations to the people who have brand new babies. Yay!!

Oh I need a job this summer in Dallas. Anyone have any ideas?

Sorry my update is so scattered, but that is how my mind has been lately.

Last Week

Just when it started feeling like spring was coming, we get five inches of snow.

Well, I am swamped with work so I have to get back and stop avoiding my reading. I have to read a 400-page book called BOWLING ALONE The Collapse and Revival of American Community for Political Science class. I have to write a five-page paper by Friday so I have a lot to read. My goal was to read it last week and write my paper this week but I read through 50 pages and fell asleep five times reading so it does not look promising. It is going to be one of those weeks. I have so many assignments due this week and like always I did not realize everything was due this week until yesterday. Well, wish me luck and I hope I survive.

Oh but on a more happy note, the bookstore was doing inventory this week. It was so much fun counting all those books and things. I think inventory is my favorite part, and buy-back (when the bookstore buys books back from the students at 60% of the new price and we have to put then in order and stuff).

Oh and all last week they had some service projects in the student building so I went almost everyday to help. We colored pictures for the head start program and made beanies for the Humanitarian aid people. It was so much fun. They had these hat looms, which is just a wooden or plastic ring with pegs sticking out of the top and you make the hat looping the string and pulling the strings over the loop. Someone said it was crocheting for dummies. I was so cool but since I could only go in for an hour of two, I never had to finish my own hat. It felt just like back in the days with Key Club and National Honor Society. I missed that feeling.

Thursday

The internet has been down all week end and most of the week so today was the first day since it’s been working that I’ve had time to get on the computer. We’ve been having beautiful weather here. Well as good as it gets in Utah. Today we reached a high of 47 F; it feels like springtime is coming. All the snow is gone well almost all the snow. There is still some on the mountains and occasionally you find some hidden in the shadows or under a pile of leaves, but the skys are clear and there is no sign of more snow.

Today I cleaned the apartment because tonight some of the girls from around the complex asked if they can use our apartment (since it is across from the lounge) to teach either aerobics or platys, or self-defense. They are having three little workshops so they are splitting up into groups. We are all invited but it took all day to clean and now I have tons of homework to do. And since I have not been on the computer in a long time (it’s kind of pointless if you don’t have internet or a paper to write) I had lots of things to look up and email to check. I don’t think I’ll have time to go but it will be awkward since they are going to be in my living room. Oh well, life goes on.